Treatment at Mayo Clinic

At Mayo Clinic, acupuncture is offered to people who have been referred by a Mayo provider for complementary and integrative treatment. At Mayo, acupuncture treatments are tailored to your unique needs, concerns and diagnosis, and may include:

Manual stimulation. The needles are gently twisted by hand after placement.

Heat and electrical stimulation. The needles are gently stimulated with a low current of electricity or heat, or both, after placement.

Acupuncture is usually done in a series of weekly treatments. During each visit, your Mayo specialist will conduct a physical exam and assess your condition before starting needle therapy. An acupuncture visit usually takes 30 to 60 minutes.

A study reviewed the use of acupuncture in more than 900 people at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, between 2004 and 2008. It found the three most common problems for which acupuncture was used were back and neck pain, other pain, and joint pain. These uses accounted for 70 percent of the more than 6,000 acupuncture treatments during that time.

Acupuncture is also occasionally used to treat other conditions, including (in descending order of frequency):

Legal Conditions and Terms

Reprint Permissions

A single copy of these materials may be reprinted for noncommercial personal use only. "Mayo," "Mayo Clinic," "MayoClinic.org," "Mayo Clinic Healthy Living," and the triple-shield Mayo Clinic logo are trademarks of Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research.